


Fugitives

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, post polarized, post-storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city is so big and so far away from the wreckage, and they are so small that it's almost as if fate never had any great intentions for them at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fugitives

Chloe is woken up against her will, jerked out of some immemorial dream by the harsh siren of a police car chasing down the Parisian street outside. The light filtering through the cheap blind is grey. The room is a soft, undeveloped photograph, an amorphous mass, and she turns to Max.  
Max is already awake, and is staring at the ceiling. She has probably been awake for the entire night.

They are fugitives from a secret massacre.

It's several years after the Decision - a word neither of them likes emphasising, but the capital letter subconsciously forces itself into their sentences - and Max's parents have finally stopped calling (if only because Chloe wasn't there to stop Max when she threw her phone into a canal. They didn't get it, Max said. They wanted me to come home. They said I was brave.)

Max is still staring at the ceiling, even when Chloe tucks the hair out Max's eyes and behind her ears, and Chloe doesn't know if she's recording or remembering. Maybe she's completely turned off.

(She always sank into her own head when they were younger, a reflection trapped in a shattered, inwards mirror which distorted the truth, and Chloe had never tried to think "robot" on purpose but had thought it many times anyway.)

Max Caulfield, the girl with cameras for eyes. A fly lands on Max's forehead.

(Robot is exactly the right word. Max switches off on a dime like she just ran out of batteries, and Chloe has to shake her, shout at her, pour cold water on her hands, beg desperately and even then she only comes back a little, unsmiling, and those are bad days because it means coldness and loneliness and Chloe holding Max's limp hand as they watch unintelligible French daytime television.)

Max's hand comes up and the fly is scared off. Today is not a bad day. Today Chloe will get smiles, maybe.

(The bathroom, Max weeping and not awake yet, 3 am on the red alarm clock by their bed, the bath full of cold water and dissolving tissue, "they're dead, they're dead, they're dead Chloe, I'm sorry I tried to burn my hand, but it was me, I'm sorry I'm sorry they're dead and I'm sorry-")

"What time is it?" Max doesn't turn her gaze away from Chloe to check the time.  
"About... five PM."  
"Good morning."   
"Morning good."  
A new joke. They both laugh, but the siren suddenly activating again outside cuts them off and makes Chloe wince.   
"Probably just some drunk students again," says Max, burying her face in Chloe's shoulder. "I heard them go past last night. Pretty hard to miss with all the singing."  
Chloe just shrugs. The apartment they rent for shit money is in the cheapest area of student accommodation, which means the bars are always full at night, and the streets are never silent.

(Chloe once drank until her eyes streamed and leant from the window screaming at the young men on the street who couldn't understand her "FIGHT ME, FIGHT ME, YOU FUCKERS CAN'T KILL ME" until Max physically dragged her to the floor and hid under the sofa until all the young men were gone. Her hangover lasted for three days. Max turned off for a week.)

This big, anonymous city. Nobody notices two American girls haphazardly learning French the hard way. They're tourists who have outstayed their welcome. They're nameless statistics. Nobody looking at them could say they ever were at the centre of any divine plan.

"Do you have work tonight?" Max doesn't remember where Chloe is working at this month. She always takes the night shift - extra overtime pay - and nearly always gets fired for losing her temper with management. Max doesn't mind. Cold showers hurt, but she shouldn't hope for any more divine favours.  
"Yeah," Chloe replies, and lets out a snort.  
"What?"  
"Nothing."  
She can't have been fired already. Max grips Chloe's shoulder. "What was it?"  
"I said nothing. Lay off."  
"Why did you snort?"

("I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU SOLD MY MOTORBIKE! YOU DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING ASK ME!"  
"CHLOE WE HAD NO RENT MONEY WE WERE GOING TO GET KICKED OUT-"  
"SO IT'S /MY/ FAULT /YOU/ SOLD MY MOTORBIKE?"  
"MAYBE IF YOU COULD HOLD A JOB DOWN FOR MORE THAN THREE DAYS-"  
"SO IT /IS/ MY FAULT! UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE! IT'S MY SHITTY FAULT AGAIN JUST LIKE IT IS FOR EVERYTHING AROUND HERE-"  
"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT??"  
"FUCK YOU MAX! FUCK YOU, YOU ALWAYS BLAME ME!"  
"WHAT??"  
"YOU ALWAYS- YOU IMPLY IT'S ALL MY FUCKING FAULT! ALL OF IT! THIS SHITTY APARTMENT AND THE GAS SUPPLY AND THE MOTORBIKE, AND THE REDUNDANCIES, OR THAT I DIDN'T LEARN FRENCH WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL OR I WOKE UP TOO LATE OR I- I FUCKING /EXIST/ AND THAT MAKES IT ALL MY FAULT! AND YOU JUST GIVE ME THE COLD SHOULDER AND ABANDON ME JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER SINGLE LET DOWN DID!"  
"... NO, FUCK YOU, /FUCK YOU/, I'M STILL HERE, YOU KNOW I'M NOT OKAY AND THAT'S WHY I """COLD SHOULDER""" YOU. STOP MAKING THIS ALL ABOUT YOU!"  
"BUT IT IS ALL ABOUT ME! OH WAIT, HERE WE GO AGAIN, IT'S ALL MY FAULT! WHY CAN'T YOU EVER JUST-")

"Lay off me," says Chloe, more irritably, and Max lets go of her shoulder. "I was remembering my manager's stupid little cough whenever I'm late, okay?"  
"Okay," says Max, wanting nothing more than to just fall asleep and not dream of a classmate's smile from a past buried deep. "I'm sorry."  
The fly bangs itself repeatedly against the glass just behind the blind.   
"I'm sorry too," says Chloe. "C'mon. Let's make some breakfast."

The kitchen is a mess. Chloe cooks eggs in a dirty pan, and dreams of her dead mother's bacon pancakes. Max huddles on the sofa, wrapped in the duvet, and flips through a photography magazine from two years ago.

(She bought it back when she went outside on a trip with Chloe to the market, after skimming through it on a whim. She didn't know enough French to read it for fun, but the pictures tugged at her stomach and made her smile. Chloe instantly bought it, even though they couldn't afford it, even though it made Max cry inconsolably later over the camera she sold to buy plane tickets to France.)

"Hey, after breakfast," Chloe pipes up over the sound of sizzling, "do you want to take a walk outside?"   
"Maybe," says Max, which means no. She used to take walks every day, nearly. Then every week. Then maybe twice a month, then none. The silence from Chloe is as pregnant with frustration as ever. This is the daily routine.

There's a little more silence, but it tastes different than usual. Max shifts, aware that Chloe is about to break some habit they'd fallen into.

"You haven't voluntarily been outside the flat for... about six months, Max."  
Max shrugs. She's aware that this is probably unhealthy behaviour, but outside is different. It's not this safe, dependable flat, where she knows which floorboards are the creaky ones and which tap squirts water on her shirt when she accidentally turns it too far. Chloe's supposed to understand that. She isn't supposed to point out that Max is in exile, is escaping jailtime for a crime nobody could ever prove she committed, is a murderer, an outsider in a lot of unwitting, unsafe strangers.   
Shit. The thought spiral has started unwinding. Max huddles in on herself, feeling the ever present pressure on her gut remind her that she is a tainted, selfish selfish selfish -  
"- just a suggestion c'mon Max don't leave me, this is a good day, we're gonna do good things -"  
Oh. Max blinks, and Chloe is in front of her, desperately clutching her shoulders. Right. Chloe is here. She's okay.   
"- we don't have to, I'm just worried okay, maybe you'd like a walk with the sunset? But we don't have to I'm okay with that just don't leave me don't -"  
"Chloe," says Max, touching Chloe's face. Look at her. Bags under her eyes, lips splitting because she bites them while she sleeps. "It's okay. I'm sorry, I just. I'm not. I'm scared. I'm."  
"Chloe lets out a long, long breath. "Me too. But it's just a walk. Just up and down the street. There's a new corner shop at the end, we could get a newspaper and come straight back."  
Max goes quiet, but not in the turning off way.

(3 am glowing on their alarm clock, Chloe huddled into a small shivering ball sick with fever and vodka, Max rubbing circles into her back and weeping, both of them weeping, "why does the universe hate us Max? Why does it want me dead? Why does every avenue lead to death? Why are we here Max? I want to go home, I want to see mom, take me home Max, please,"  
"I can't, I can't, I'm sorry,"  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's all my fault, it's all my fault they died,"  
"It's not our fault, it's not our fault, we're still alive, I love you,"  
"I'm sorry,")

Chloe holds her breath. The eggs are growing cold in the pan.   
"Tomorrow," says Max, which is the most she's promised Chloe for months. Chloe kisses her forehead.   
"We'll take a walk together," she promises back.

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry


End file.
